Lepanthes saltatrix Luer & Hirtz 1996 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes Novon 1993

Leaf and Flowers Photos by © Eric Hunt and His Orchid Website

Common Name The Female Dancer Lepanthes [refers to the fanciful flower]

Flower Size 1/8" [3 mm]

Found in Ecuador in cloud forests as a miniature sized, hot to warm growing epiphyte at elevations of 300 to 1300 meters with erect to suberect, slender ramicauls enveloped basally by 7 to 8 minutely ciliate, lepanthiform sheaths carrying a single, apical, spreading, thinly coriaceous, pale rose or lavender, with rose or lavender reticulation, ovate, subacute leaf with smooth margins and a rounded base that blooms in the winter through spring on a congested, distichous, successively several flowered, 1/2" [1.25 cm] long, racemose inflorescence with echinate floral bracts.

Similar to the wideranging L calodictyon and sufficiently different from the following to be separate species L barbelifera, L pantominia, L pretiosa, L tentacula and L volador. This one differs in the reticulated, pale lavender to green, non undulate-margined leaves the three veined lateral sepals, the shortly pubescent petals without coarse cilia on the margins and a lip that is twice as large as L calodictyon.

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XIV Systematics of Draconanthes and Lepanthes Luer 1996 drawing fide; Australian Orchid Review Vol 69 No 5 2004 photo; Flora of Ecuador No 88 Lepanthes and affiliates Dodson & Luer 2011 drawing fide

Checked type drawing W3Tropicos OK